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The Mariners split their four-game sets with Oakland and Texas but have dropped to Chicago and Houston. Because, baseball.

Still, the news of the day will not be the forthcoming bullpen move to replace Stephen Pryor, but that the Mariners have finally done what many of us long suspected and started building a partnership group for a regional sports network.

Few actual details are available, but I’m doubting that it makes the Mariners worse off in terms of revenue. As with other recent deals, this one is a doozy in length, lasting until 2030, so both parties had to feel comfortable with growth projections to lock in together for that length.

It’s early but with 14 games played — split equally at home and on the road — Mariner games have seen 61 runs scored at home (8.7 per game) and 57 (8.1 per game) on the road. Last season games at Safeco saw 517 runs scored (6.4 per game) while Mariner road games featured 753 runs (9.3 per game).

It doesn’t matter, but I’ll take any pretense to re-publish those 2012 numbers. Those are crazy!

Batter

PA

P/PA

Slash line

nBB

SO (sw)

1B/2B/3B/HR

Sw%

Ct%

Qual+

A Jackson

57

3.7

.404/.491/.500

5

4 (3)

18 / 2 / 0 / 1

45

94

126

M Cabrera

51

3.4

.356/.442/.511

6

4 (3)

12 / 2 / 1 / 1

53

87

164

T Hunter

50

3.5

.408/.440/.592

1

6 (5)

14 / 4 / 1 / 1

55

89

119

P Fielder*

49

4.0

.421/.549/.842

9

7 (4)

8 / 4 / 0 / 4

36

83

134

V Martinez^

45

4.4

.158/.267/.158

6

3 (1)

6 / 0 / 0 / 0

35

94

141

J Peralta

45

4.0

.295/.311/.409

1

9 (8)

10 / 2 / 0 / 1

49

80

142

A Avila*

39

4.3

.216/.256/.378

2

10 (8)

6 / 0 / 0 / 2

44

75

130

O Infante

37

3.5

.314/.324/.314

1

3 (2)

11 / 0 / 0 / 0

41

87

74

A Dirks*

35

4.0

.207/.314/.207

5

7 (7)

6 / 0 / 0 / 0

51

79

53

Oh, right, the Tigers are really good at hitting. They’re full of good hitters who are actually hitting well. What a concept. And looking at the above slash lines for Jackson, Cabrera, Hunter and Fielder “hitting well” is a giant understatement. I wonder what that would be like to root for.

MARINERS

ΔMs

TIGERS

EDGE

INFIELD

-1.1 (20th)

-2.2

2.8 (11th)

Tigers

OUTFIELD

3.6 (7th)

2.6

-1.3 (19th)

Mariners

RBBIP

0.296 (12th)

-.004

0.301 (13th)

Mariners

OVERALL

2.5 (12th)

0.4

1.5 (16th)

MARINERS

The Mariners are forced to run out a makeshift, broken, dumb outfield alignment for much of the series against the Rangers and numerically they performed well. Visually they were… this is why defensive numbers in small samples shouldn’t be relied upon. And to think, these are team-level numbers. Now imagine how silly player-specific numbers would be.

16 APR 19:10 – AARON HARANG vs DOUG FISTER

I’ve tweaked the formatting of these graphs a bit. They’re larger now which I’m not entirely thrilled with, but was a bit necessary with WordPress.

Also, to address a question in the previous preview, the grades are computed like a MAD version of standard score. So instead of the figure minus the average, then divided by the standard deviation; the pitch’s grade has the league median subtracted away and then is divided by the median absolute deviation. Here’s Aaron Harang:

It indicates that Harang is predominantly a fastball and slider pitcher with an occasional, bad curve ball thrown as well. His slider is pretty good, missing an average number of bats, but he locates it well and it gets him some ground balls.

17 APR 19:10 – FELIX HERNANDEZ vs MAX SCHERZER

Given how much bigger the scouting graphs have to be here, I’m struggling with the question of how many and how often to post them. However, Felix and Verlander are consistently two of baseball’s best pitchers so with this rare opportunity to view them in the same series, I’ll present the graphs for both of them.

These may not seem as dominating as they should be for Felix, but recall how much better than the average or median it takes to get a whole deviation of difference. Felix being above average — in many cases well above average — at everything is what makes him so special. That and his glorious curve ball.

18 APR 12:40 – HISASHI IWAKUMA vs JUSTIN VERLANDER

Compared to Verlander here.

You can see Verlander’s edge in the tools that propel him to a higher strikeout-to-walk ratio (he’s been around 4.0 to Felix’s 3.5), but that Felix really shines in keeping the ball out of the air, which has helped Felix to nine fewer home runs since 2011 over nearly the exact same number of batters faced.

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